Kai walks into the Havenwood courtyard. Five townsfolk stand around the well and the shop, each a tall figure with a round void somewhere in their clothes.

Chimera

A town that was painted before it was built. A boy drawn in ink who does not always stay drawn. Somewhere past the chapel, the paint stops.

Anchor stabilized 24 October 2026. This is the record of where the game stands. The record is kept in order.

Where it stands

What is anchored in the packaged build, as far as the record knows. The build is native, on a Mac, and playable from the courtyard to the street. The record has been wrong before and corrected itself.

Engine: Unreal Engine 5, since 19 October 2026. Before that the same world was proved in Godot, and before that it was a browser game.
Look: Locked on 20 October: ink lines, five value bands, lavender shadows, paper grain, flat painted colour, no global illumination. How it works.
Places: The courtyard, the street, Seaside lane, the harbour, Church square and Hill village are built, on one map with no loading. The chapel and Dyers' Steps are being built now. The world.
People: Kai and 11 townsfolk, made from two lineup drawings. Each has a name and something to say. A few of them walk routes. The characters.
Story: Act I is Havenwood, and Havenwood is what is built. The three acts, the cast and the systems are written. The story, the mechanics.
Latest build: Havenwood, 24 October 2026, macOS on Apple Silicon. Six places, eleven residents, title and pause menus, dialogue, and a save that puts you back where you stood.
Now: The chapel from the inside, the first door that opens, and Dyers' Steps off the lane. The roadmap.

Recent updates

Each entry is a save point. Touch one and it shows you a frame of something that already happened. All of them.

Moving

The first recording. A camera followed a drawing around a painting for forty seconds and nobody stopped it. Courtyard, street, arch, well, two conversations. Trimmed at the ends, otherwise as it happened.

It plays on its own and loops. There is no sound in it; the sound is in the navigation.

Havenwood, 22 October. Walk, run, talk. The camera goes through the tree once, which is on the list.

From the build

Frames from the review rig, which takes the same views after every change so the look can be checked against the day it was accepted. The rig does not know what it is looking at.

Kai from behind in the courtyard, his cape blowing, the Shopkeeper and Child nearby. — **Courtyard, late afternoon.** Kai, the Shopkeeper and the Child under the painted sky.

The street: a tree in a stone planter, an arched door with steps, a lantern. — **The street.** Laid out from the town kit on a one-metre grid.

Where the people come from

Every figure in the game starts as this drawing. It is taken apart, turned into a shape, and the drawing is put back on as skin. The head and hands are built by hand. They do not remember any of this.

Lineup drawing of six figures: Kai in a navy cape, a woman in teal, a shopkeeper in yellow with a cone hat, an old man in violet with a ring head, a child in coral, a fisherman in blue. — **The lineup.** Masks and holes: tall faceless or masked figures, one round void each. Kai is the one in red.

How it got here

Three versions of the same square. The story stayed where it was. Everything around it was replaced, twice. The record calls this iteration.

Pixel-art village square with a fountain and a large tree, from the browser game. — **2025.** A browser JRPG in pixel art, with battles and quests. It is still in this repository's history.

Three-dimensional village square with half-timbered houses and a fountain, from the Godot build. — **September 2026.** A native 3D town in Godot. It played, but it read as toy blocks, and that led to the painted direction.

The painted-look street from the Unreal build. — **October 2026.** Unreal Engine, with the look locked and the figures drawn.